Soncino

Soncino stands near the Oglio, on a rise above the Lombard plain. Control of the river crossing helped the town prosper after it became a free borough under Cremonese influence in 1118. Its walls and fortress grew during the thirteenth century, when the town also developed mills supplied by a network of watercourses.

Under the Visconti, Soncino became an important stronghold on the Oglio frontier between Milan and Venice. Venetian forces occupied it three times in the fifteenth century. Its woollen cloth found buyers throughout Europe. Alongside its military role, the town supported a flourishing trade in woollen cloth, carried on by local families and Jewish merchants. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Austrian and Napoleonic authorities dismantled parts of the town's fortifications.